#made myself miserable thinking abt how my art isn’t as good as I want it to be | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gloxinian · 5 years

Text

ik i talked to him abt wanting to still be friends but, after thinking a lot, i’m really not comfortable still talking to somebody that was that toxic to me fr so long. and ik posting this might not be the “classiest” thing to do but i feel like i have to get it off my chest bc otherwise a part of me is pushing to say “it wasn’t that bad” or to excuse it bc “well he apologized and said he wouldn’t do it again” even tho he kept doing these things and showed literally no signs of changing. and i’m so tired of entering these conversations and having it lead to no change or be twisted to be about pitying him. this isn’t really a callout or anything so i’m leaving his name out and there aren’t receipts or anything. it might sound trivial bc i’m starting with the small stuff and working forward but idk. i’m just tired and felt like i needed to write smth out.

im not sure the best way to word this, but i never felt like i could enjoy things or have things just fr myself. the only way i could talk abt things was if i was criticizing them or it was smth he loved. these are just a few things and alone each of them would just be annoying, but it all just compounded into making me feel miserable like i wasn’t allowed to love anything.

when i showed him a series that was very important to me, the first the he did was insult the art style, characters, story, etc.

when i started getting excited about pokemon swsh and the new pokemon, he immediately started mocking my favorite ones and sending me posts/articles talking abt how the game was going to be garbage, even after i asked him to stop.

when i got my first noise cancelling headphones and was excited abt how well they worked, he immediately told me that it was a good thing they were noise cancelling so i wouldn’t be able to hear him crying.

constantly glancing over my shoulder and making fun of what he saw me playing or enjoying. new game he doesn’t play? looks stupid/cheap/boring. not doing great? makes fun of me for doing poor even after i repeatedly tell him to stop.

and whenever he said something particularly upsetting like that headphones thing, he would immediately say “oh it’s an intrusive thought” or “oh it was just a joke” when i got upset and confronted him about it. and he’d immediately turn around and make the situation about him and how i should be pitying him.

the worst examples of this come from over a year ago when i was still in college. my depression was hitting me really hard bc i was back living at home instead of dorms, i was struggling really hard with classes, and had teachers that mocked me whenever i tried to ask questions. i was actively suicidal during this time and had repeatedly expressed worries to friends and family that i wouldn’t be able to support myself in the future, that i was a failure, and i felt like my only option was to drop out so i would have at least some control in my life. this was the lowest point i’d ever been. i’m going to list a few things that happened from smallest to worst and it’s important they all happened during this time. and he was aware this is how i was during this time.

he was friends with somebody that actively hated me. fine, not that big of a deal bc friends don’t always get along with boyfriends. but how this was handled was absolutely horrid. this friend insulted me whenever i spoke, even told me i shouldn’t talk period. he kept being friends with them and insisting we hang out more. that friendship only ended after (1) they accused me of being a pedophile bc i felt physically sick hearing ppl talk abt loli/shota stuff. and i was the only one who called this out for being so. fucked up. to call someone that for being distressed by even seeing cp terms. he only said he’d talk to said friend after i was incredibly/vocally upset abt this.

one night depression almost got the best of me and i stopped responding to any calls/texts/etc. said friend got annoyed he was scared i might actually be dead. this was the event that actually ended that friendship and honestly i’m mostly upset it took that friend literally not caring if i was dead for my boyfriend to actually give a shit how i was being treated.

he fucking. cheated on me. and told me how he was planning on moving in with the person he was cheating on me with “in case things didn’t work out with me”. he knew i was suicidal over being uncertain about my future and did this, even telling me he was cheating on me BECAUSE of me being suicidal and uncertain.

the worst thing for me is that ofc he managed to make this about him. maybe it doesn’t make sense for it to feel worse, but it does to me for some reason. last time we even spoke about him cheating on me, he went on and on about how he hurt he was bc he felt used by the person he cheated on me with. bc that person stopped talking to him after he told them he didn’t want to do sexual stuff anymore.

things didn’t really get “better” or anything once i graduated. if anything, they just got more stressful. i was still stressed at whether i’d be able to support myself, but a bit more stable now that i had a job and a degree. my ex moved in with the promise that he would be working to get a job so that he could support himself, grow confidence, and keep things equal. i don’t. have the energy to detail everything and don’t know if it’s right. but the short of it is that i constantly had to nag him to even send out applications and he didn’t even want to go to interviews. things got really stressful between us and it eventually came out (after i told him the relationship was unhealthy and unbalanced, that i had no desire to support him entirely as this was a source of extreme stress and a lot to ask of someone new to the work force, etc) that he expected me to fully support him financially and that was what he wanted.

he wanted me to fully support him financially, to take responsibility for improving his entire emotional maturity and recovery without taking any initiative, and to fully care for him once i got home from a full day of work (as i’ve been doing). there was never a “what can i do for you?” or any signs/desire for positive change. it was only “what are you going to do for me?”. the relationship was incredibly unhealthy, unblanced, and it was clear that i wasn’t a partner but a surrogate caretaker. and when i broke up with him, he accused me of breaking my promise to support him.

and i just. i’m tired. the whole relationship felt manipulative and unhealthy, looking back. i don’t know. maybe i’m wrong. but i just don’t feel comfortable continuing to speak to somebody who repeatedly put me down, treated me like an expendable resource, and targeted the thing they knew i was most vulnerable about (my own independence and being able to support myself) when he knew that had made me suicidal in the past.

i know we have some shared friends and he’s probably going to paint me like some villain to you guys. he already compared me to his previous abuser multiple times. i don’t want to start some stupid “war” or drama or whatever and won’t push back or argue or anything because i have a ton on my plate both health and financially right now. i don’t have the energy for stupid drama. maybe i included more details than i should have, but i also left out a lot of details because i’m not really sure how much is appropriate here since this isn’t a callout or whatever. there aren’t “receipts” since many of these things were personal interactions and i’m not looking to prove anything or make a callout. you don’t have to believe me or read this or idk.

i just wanted to get this all off my chest.

#ahritext #negative #long post

3 notes · View notes

aeide-thea · 7 years

Text

[again: discussion of embodiment, gender, socialized/internalized fatphobia, some other bullshit probably]

i'm struggling a loooooot lately with feeling like i should just go back to performing girlness ““properly””, like, give up on binding and shave off my body hair and wear sundresses and tiny shorts etc etc

only, uh, literally every time i try on femme shit anymore, even just in the privacy of my own room, i make miserable awkward faces at myself in the mirror and put it away again

and i know without the shadow of a doubt that (re)engaging with ~normative standards of femininity~ would make me feel indelicate and ““fat”” (and i know, god do i know, there are so many fucking problems with that construction, like the way it conflates a feeling with a physical reality that isn't even mine to appropriate, also fat girls are gorgeous and also regardless of beauty they deserve way fucking better than to be a rhetorical boogeyman!! but such is the pernicious framing i end up falling back into, like planetary gravity when you fall just short of escape velocity) and just generally Hideous and Bad, when like, there is nothing actually wrong with this body, it is frankly more capable and more appealing than i've done anything (either physically or morally) to merit! but also there are only two things that have ever gotten me to stop obsessively critiquing my own thighs, and one of them is moving my body enough that the fleshiness goes away (which is great when it works, but that isn't where i am right now), and the other is dressing in dude!shorts lengthy and roomy enough that i'm not constantly having to evaluate my own body as aesthetic/sexual/failed object

i keep thinking too that like, i could probably be girlfriend's girlfriend, or another girl's, but i don't think i could bear to be a boy's

and i mean, it's admittedly debatable whether i want to date or even fuck boys anymore, regardless of terminology—i sort of suspect not, but i don't really feel ready to definitively cross out the possibility, either? which is sort of inconvenient bc i'm relating a lot to butchness, 'my gender is lesbian,' etc, except of course if you aren't (quite, definitively) a lesbian as such then probably those things aren't actually yours to relate to

but yeah, something about being a boi/Gender Alien among girls but not really wanting to be among boys—like, part of me thinks, i want the whole world to be girls, and then i want to be what passes for a boy in that brave new world? but then, it probably isn't much fairer to tar all boys with the brush of private-school peers past than it would be if i did that to girls; probably there are boys out there who want to be gentle and kind and good, probably (definitely) i even know some of them—

but god, you guys, it's just binarism and constricting gender roles all the way down!! you unpick one layer and then you discover the underpinnings are made of it too!! it's exhausting!!

anyway i think you can not-totally-meaninglessly superimpose the idea of being nonbinary on a binary framework, bc like, people are almost all gnc to varying degrees, even comfortably-cis people, bc gender roles are cut along such untenably narrow lines that some departure is almost inevitable, and so some people who're positioned much the same as me are gonna find it useful to explicitly identify as nb and some people are just gonna lump their gnc-ness in with their gayness, or else their sportiness or theatricality or race or class or disability or whatever feels like the right framework for them, and like, it's fine if we aren't mutually legible, prolly, we just gotta be mutually respectful

and i mean, i get real anxious and insecure abt not having a Coherent Narrative that ~justifies~ the various gender moves i'm trying to make, but honestly even if i were officially stamped a Girl (i mean, i pretty literally was at birth, that's kinda how the system works, but like, if some more-Enlightened Gender Tribunal came to the same conclusion) i think i'd still get to ask for e.g. they/them pronouns, if those felt less Wrong or even if i just thought it'd be fun—bc frankly gender should be fun, i think! any movement away from discomfort & towards delight is its own sufficient justification! hashtag sounds fake but okay

really—i keep waiting to come up with some kind of Inherent Gender Truth i'm sure of, that makes a coherent program out of all my yearnings and discomforts, but i think maybe actually there is no identity that isn't just the sum of these smaller yearnings, we do the best to look at the data points and plot a coherent curve from them, but like, if there's anything i learned from all my bullshit high school attempts at science, it's that you get outliers! reality is messy!

so like: i run on estrogen, currently; i have a chest i bind and genitals i have awfully mixed feelings about (like, they're good for certain kinds of fucking i like, but really useless for other kinds i'd also like, and when i'm not using them i hate them unalloyedly), and strong thighs and strong shoulders i gotta sheathe in various textile tubes to go out in public, just like anybody else; and i love language and bicycling and beautiful restful spaces, and poetry that presses on some knot in you until it dissolves to an aching tenderness, and music and food and art and making abstract theory of the everyday interpersonal particular; and those last lenses are no less true or useful than the first ones

maybe gender can stay shut up in its box for a while, and we don't have to worry about whether it's alive or dead: out here in the open space we have breezes to ruffle our hair, and songs to sing

#i've been staring at this post too long #i gotta be done with it #also i wrote most of it earlier while camped out at the chemo unit so like #disclaimer or whatever #but anyway take it as an assemblage of pieces really; if any of the pieces is interesting/useful to anyone else i'll be glad enough of that #Gender Alien Nation #what is gender we just don't know #embodiment is violence!!#feelingsblogging #theory #fatphobia cw

11 notes · View notes

realtalk-tj · 6 years

Note

Do you guys have any advice for current juniors that might be really stressed out abt college? My grades aren't even nearly as great as everyone else so I'm scared that I wont get into any colleges I want to go to or wont even have a shot at the crazy colleges everyone will be getting into next year, but I also just want to stop worrying about college since it's really affecting my mental health. I think I'm okay in the other college-y aspects like ecs and sats but my grades worry me so much :(

Response from Firenze:

I’m a junior with subpar grades who’s barely managed to avoid stressing too much about college myself, so I feel your pain. My personal philosophy regarding worrying is that if it’s not productive, don’t do it, so that’s how I’m going to offer advice. Maybe the same approach will work for you.

Regarding college: even if you feel like you have bad grades compared to the people around you, you’re still at TJ. You’re still going to graduate from one of the top public high schools in the country. Especially if you apply to schools off the beaten track for TJ students, your extraordinary high school experience will stand out. Have you looked at Hidden Ivies: Thirty Colleges of Excellence? Ms. Kropf has a copy, and personally I’ve found it a great resource. Grinnell College in Iowa, for example, sounds amazing to me, and judging by the empty scattergram on Family Connection, they don’t get too many applicants from TJ. However, as a junior on the cusp of second semester, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. Thinking about college beyond the level of taking the standardized tests (kudos on doing well, by the way, that will only help you in college admissions) and figuring out what colleges you’d like to apply to is pointless. So I’ve been putting it out of my mind.

If you’re worried about your grades, think about what you can do to improve them. It’s still only first semester. Put more effort into your math homework or Webassign. Talk to your teachers. Go to tutoring eighth period. You know your situation. However, you don’t have to. Your grades do not determine your value as a human being, and I’ve made peace with my Bs by deciding that… well, there’s a certain amount of effort I’m willing to put into schoolwork, and beyond that I’d rather be doing other things than trying to get an A. If there are ways you’d rather be spending your time, go for it.

Also, what do you gain by caring about “crazy” colleges? I don’t know or care which of last year’s seniors are going to Ivy League schools. You said yourself you care about getting into a college you want to go to. If you’re stressed out by comparing yourself to others at TJ, I can’t imagine Harvard would be much fun at all. tl;dr you’re going to survive this, and I recommend managing your worry by either solving the root causes or deciding that the effort to get perfect grades isn’t worth your time.

Response From Fleur:

I went though the college admissions process and I may go through it again. I’ve thought long and hard about this, and here’s what I’d like to share:

My best advice for juniors and below at TJ when it comes to college admissions is to set realistic expectations. Expecting to get into an ivy league is not reasonable expectations in my opinion. I personally believe that schools with ridiculously low acceptance rates to get into shouldn’t be the schools you’re really seriously considering when you think about where you want to go to college, but more of an application that’s a cool opportunity you’d like to take. A good measure of how hard it is to get into a school is a look at the acceptance rates. You can also look at average GPAs and test scores. I think test scores will be more important for TJ students to look at than GPA.

Why your GPA will most likely be noticeably lower to the average person accepted into selective colleges (and that’s OK):

TJ has grade deflation. A lot of it. At any other regular high school, most TJ students would be getting All A’s. But TJ isn’t any other high school, and I think the vast majority of the stress students are under comes from the fact that they’re worried because their grades won’t be as high as other people’s when it comes to college admissions just because of the nature of the grade deflation.

The average GPA of students accepted at my college was a 4.0 unweighted, AKA, the students at my college were accepted with straight As on average. And then there’s me, with my ungodly low unweighted GPA in comparison (probably the lowest or one of the lowest in my TJ class), dragging down their GPA admissions average because my GPA was THAT LOW. No way your high school GPA is as low as mine.

I still got in though and I’m pretty good at school actually (I find that every TJ student is actually really good at school and as time goes on they get even better at it, I also find that they’re often conditioned to think otherwise and that everything else in life is like TJ (hard and miserable at times and they’re not good at it). It’s not. Nothing is. Remember: Grade deflation!!!)

Btw, here’s a good grade deflation article. You may notice things about it that seem similar to TJ life: http://college.usatoday.com/2012/06/23/how-grade-deflation-can-affect-your-college-selection/

The schools I think TJ students can realistically aim for should probably have an acceptance rate between 25-40%. Any higher than 40% and you’re very very likely to get in. “Safety schools” in my opinion should accept about 70% or possibly even more of students. Also, make sure you choose safety schools you’d be really happy going to! If I apply to college all over again, I’m going to increase the amount of schools I apply to in that approx. 25-40% range.

If you want to get into a college and you graduated from TJ, there is a college out there that is more than willing to accept you :)

Actually, considering how many colleges there are in the US, there are probably hundreds of them. There are colleges out there that accept 99% of people who apply.

But yeah, it’s really important to set your expectations realistically. The criteria of what you want out of the school is more important than the school’s reputation. Do you want quality food? Dorms? Surrounding area? Country? City? A certain major? Greek life? Size? Sports?...etc. If you really look for these qualities in schools you’re likely to get into, you’ll find schools that you’d like to attend. After all, there are like 4000? colleges in the US.

Your life has a lot of meaning, and the name of the college you attend doesn’t factor into that meaning. The name of the college you attend also doesn’t make your brain last longer into old age, or keep you healthy, or help you form close personal relationships with other people. You’re also too young for it to be possible for you to be a failure. You’re going to get into a college. And if you make an effort to apply to colleges that you’d want to go to... :) Also, more than a third of college students transfer colleges so you’re definitely not stuck somewhere for 4 years after you get in. In addition, a bunch of people take time off between HS and college and go on an adventure before applying or going to college. Whatever you want to do in life for a career does not depend on the college you attend. The elitist TJ bubble is very wacky and misguided and your self worth and the college you go to aren’t actually related. Some people take time off in the middle of their college experience...etc.

Something that really helped me calm myself about college admissions: Remember how some colleges accept like 99% of people that apply? I found one of those. It seemed like a really nice place. Had it’s own path to a beach too. No grades, located near where I was born in the Pacific Northwest...etc. Knowing the location I was thinking “I would feel right at home there”. It helped me not worry so much because heyyyy almost a 99% acceptance rate! (Evergreen state if you’re wondering). Also, I decided I wouldn’t tell anyone what college I got into. I didn’t let anyone publish it in TJ today either. I kept it secret, told people I wouldn’t tell anyone. I remember telling a few people, but I just made sure I wasn’t the focus of the colleges conversation. I wanted to stay as separate from the elitist TJ bubble, where self-love and meaning and purpose in life and “service above self” doesn’t exist, as I possibly good.

If you need some things to destress and relax from all the worrying:

Helpful with meditation: http://quietkit.com/

Helpful with self-care: http://youfeellikeshit.com/

Helpful with self-compassion: https://yogisurprise.com/downloads/The-Art-of-Self-Love.pdf

If you need someone your age to complain to, there’s a hotline for that: https://teenlineonline.org/talk-now/

0 notes